Old Testament · 31 chapters

1 Samuel

• No. 27 1 Samuel 20:24-29

  David had risen from court favorite to marked man. King Saul, eaten by jealousy, has already tried more than once to kill him. Saul's son Jonathan, who is David's closest friend, cannot believe his father...

• No. 36 1 Samuel 7:12-17

  Israel had lost the ark of the covenant to the Philistines in a battle at Ebenezer years before, and the loss had gone deep. Under Samuel, the last of the judges, the people put away their foreign gods and...

• No. 83 1 Samuel 10:1-7

  Israel has demanded a king, and Samuel has warned them what a king will cost. Saul, a young man from Benjamin, has come looking for his father's lost donkeys and been sent to the seer. This passage is what...

• No. 129 1 Samuel 29:6-11

  David has been on the run from Saul for years, and has taken the only shelter available: he has gone over to the Philistines and become a vassal of Achish, king of Gath. Now the Philistines are massing to...

• No. 144 1 Samuel 15:12-16

  Saul has been sent to destroy the Amalekites and everything they own. He has won the battle and kept the best livestock and the enemy king alive. Samuel comes to find him, and this passage is their meeting.

• No. 200 1 Samuel 5:7-12

  The Philistines have beaten Israel in battle and captured the ark of the covenant. This passage is what happens to them afterward, and it is closer to comedy than to horror until it turns.

• No. 220 1 Samuel 23:12-18

  David is on the run with a band of about six hundred men, moving from one hideout to the next while Saul hunts him every single day. He has just had to abandon Keilah, a town he had rescued from the...

• No. 294 1 Samuel 14:13-17

  This is the middle of a bold, nearly reckless act of faith. Jonathan, the king's son, has slipped away from his father's camp with no one but his armor-bearer, on the conviction that nothing can stop the LORD...

• No. 387 1 Samuel 5:1-6

  After a disastrous battle, the Philistines have captured the ark of God, the sign of the LORD's presence among Israel, and they do the natural thing for victors: they carry it into the temple of their own god,...

• No. 443 1 Samuel 14:7-12

  This is the moment just before Jonathan and his armor-bearer launch their astonishing two-man attack on a Philistine garrison, and it turns on a short exchange between them that is easy to rush past. Jonathan...

• No. 533 1 Samuel 10:14-19

  Saul has just been secretly anointed by Samuel as Israel's first king, and when his uncle asks what Samuel said, Saul tells him about the lost donkeys they had been searching for but, the text notes carefully,...

• No. 542 1 Samuel 1:9-14

  Hannah is in anguish. She is childless in a culture where that was a crushing shame, provoked and belittled year after year, and she comes to the sanctuary at Shiloh in bitterness of soul and pours it out to...

• No. 567 1 Samuel 10:20-27

  The day has come for Israel's first king to be publicly revealed, and Samuel narrows it down by lot, tribe by tribe, family by family, until the lot falls on Saul son of Kish. There is just one problem: when...

• No. 580 1 Samuel 29:1-5

  David is in a genuinely terrible position, and it is a mess of his own making. Fleeing from Saul, he had taken refuge among the Philistines, Israel's enemies, and had won the trust of their king Achish by...

• No. 602 1 Samuel 21:7-15

  David is on the run from Saul, alone and unarmed, and he flees to Gath, a Philistine city, of all places, the hometown of the giant he had killed. It is a desperate move, and it goes wrong immediately. The...

• No. 634 1 Samuel 12:1-5

  Samuel is old, at the end of a lifetime of leading Israel, and as he hands power over to the new king, he does something remarkable. He stands before the whole nation and invites them to put his entire career...

• No. 678 1 Samuel 19:15-19

  Saul's jealousy of David has hardened into a plan to kill him. He sends men to watch David's house through the night and take him in the morning. Standing between them is Michal, Saul's own daughter, who is...

• No. 687 1 Samuel 22:6-10

  Saul is coming apart. David has slipped through his hands again, and this scene finds the king sitting under a tamarisk tree at Gibeah with his spear in his hand, the spear he keeps reaching for, surrounded by...

• No. 717 1 Samuel 20:35-42

  David is in hiding, and Jonathan, Saul's son and heir, has learned that his father truly means to kill him. The two have sworn a covenant of friendship, and now Jonathan carries out the signal they arranged....

• No. 766 1 Samuel 28:1-7

  The Philistines have massed for war, and when Saul sees the size of their army, the text says his heart trembled greatly. He is a king out of his depth, and he does the right first thing: he inquires of the...

• No. 795 1 Samuel 25:32-39

  David is on his way to commit a massacre. A wealthy fool named Nabal has insulted him and refused his men food, and David, enraged, has strapped on his sword and set out with four hundred men to kill Nabal and...

• No. 817 1 Samuel 18:6-13

  David has just killed Goliath and saved Israel, and as the army comes home the women pour out of every town, dancing and singing a victory song: Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands. It is...

• No. 840 1 Samuel 18:24-30

  Saul's jealousy has curdled into a plan to have David killed, but he is too shrewd to do it openly. So he wraps the trap in an honor. He offers David his daughter Michal in marriage, but he sets the...

• No. 854 1 Samuel 19:1-5

  Saul has finally said it out loud, ordering his son Jonathan and all his servants to kill David. And Jonathan, who loves David as his own soul, does two brave things. First he warns David to hide himself. But...

• No. 857 1 Samuel 3:11-16

  The boy Samuel has just learned to recognize God's voice in the night, answering, speak, for your servant is listening. And the very first message God gives him to carry is a crushing one, and it is about the...

• No. 879 1 Samuel 16:7-11

  Samuel has come to Bethlehem to anoint one of Jesse's sons as king in Saul's place. He sees the eldest, Eliab, tall and impressive, and assumes this is the one. God stops him: do not look at his appearance or...

• No. 902 1 Samuel 18:14-18

  David is rising. He behaves wisely in everything, the LORD is with him, and all Israel and Judah love him. Saul watches this and grows afraid; the more David succeeds, the more Saul dreads him. So Saul devises...

• No. 906 1 Samuel 22:16-23

  This is a brutal scene in the story of Saul. The priest Ahimelech had unknowingly helped David when David was fleeing, giving him bread and a sword. Saul, consumed by paranoia, condemns Ahimelech and his whole...

• No. 910 1 Samuel 2:27-36

  An unnamed man of God comes to old Eli the priest with a devastating message. God recalls the honor he gave Eli's family, chosen out of all Israel to be his priests, given all the offerings, and then asks the...

• No. 1110 1 Samuel 31:7-13

  Saul and his sons have died on Mount Gilboa, and Israel's army has fled. The Philistines find the bodies, cut off Saul's head, strip his armor, and fasten his corpse to the wall of Beth-shan as a trophy. But...

• No. 1125 1 Samuel 4:12-16

  Israel has just been routed by the Philistines, and the ark of God captured. A messenger from the battle, clothes torn and dirt on his head, runs the whole way to Shiloh. Old Eli, ninety-eight and blind, is...

• No. 1134 1 Samuel 4:17-22

  The messenger delivers the full weight of the disaster: Israel has fled, there has been a great slaughter, Eli's two sons Hophni and Phinehas are dead, and the ark of God has been captured. At the word about...

• No. 1189 1 Samuel 8:7-22

  Israel has demanded a king so they can be like the other nations. God tells Samuel to give them what they ask, but with a sobering word: they have not rejected you, they have rejected me from being king over...

• No. 1193 1 Samuel 19:6-14

  For a moment, peace seems restored: Jonathan persuades his father Saul to swear that David will not be killed, and David returns to court as before. But when David wins another great victory, the old jealousy...

• No. 1318 1 Samuel 17:16-25

  For forty days, morning and evening, the Philistine giant Goliath has come out to taunt the armies of Israel, and for forty days Israel has done nothing but tremble. Jesse sends his young son David to the camp...

• No. 1333 1 Samuel 9:6-11

  Saul, sent out by his father to find some lost donkeys, has searched in vain and is ready to turn back. But his servant suggests another course: there is a man of God in the nearby city, held in honor, whose...

• No. 1387 1 Samuel 24:1-8

  Saul, hunting David with three thousand men, goes alone into a cave to relieve himself, not knowing that David and his men are hiding in its depths. Here is David's chance; his men whisper that this is the day...

• No. 1446 1 Samuel 17:38-44

  Before David goes out against Goliath, Saul dresses him in his own armor, a bronze helmet, a coat of mail, a sword. David tries to walk in it and cannot: I cannot go with these, he says, for I have not tested...

• No. 1448 1 Samuel 26:6-11

  A second time, David has the chance to kill Saul. Slipping into Saul's camp by night with Abishai, he finds the king asleep, his spear stuck in the ground by his head, the whole army sleeping around him....

• No. 1552 1 Samuel 1:15-19

  Hannah, childless and grieving, has been praying at the sanctuary so fervently, her lips moving without sound, that the priest Eli mistakes her for drunk. She explains: I am a woman troubled in spirit; I have...

• No. 1565 1 Samuel 3:17-21

  God has given the boy Samuel a hard word about the house of Eli, a word of judgment. In the morning Eli presses him to tell it all, holding nothing back. Samuel tells him everything, and Eli receives the...

• No. 1576 1 Samuel 23:24-29

  Saul is closing in on David in the wilderness of Maon. The two are on opposite sides of a mountain, Saul and his men circling around to trap David, David hurrying to escape but nearly surrounded, about to be...

• No. 1593 1 Samuel 1:1-8

  Elkanah has two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah has children; Hannah has none, for the LORD had closed her womb. Elkanah loves Hannah and gives her a double portion, but her childlessness is a constant...

• No. 1606 1 Samuel 30:21-25

  David and his men have recovered everything the Amalekites carried off, but two hundred of his six hundred men had been too exhausted to make the final march and had stayed behind with the baggage. When David...

• No. 1658 1 Samuel 3:1-5

  The boy Samuel is ministering to the LORD under Eli, and the narrator notes the spiritual climate: the word of the LORD was rare in those days, and visions were not widespread. Eli's eyes have grown dim, and...

• No. 1671 1 Samuel 22:1-5

  David, fleeing from Saul, escapes to the cave of Adullam. His family comes down to him there, and so do others, a striking company: everyone in distress, everyone in debt, everyone discontented gathered to...

• No. 1699 1 Samuel 18:1-5

  After David's victory over Goliath, the soul of Jonathan is knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loves him as his own soul. The two make a covenant of friendship. And Jonathan does something remarkable: he...

• No. 1738 1 Samuel 9:12-16

  Saul, a young man sent by his father to find some lost donkeys, has searched in vain and, at his servant's suggestion, comes to a town to consult the seer, Samuel. The townspeople tell him Samuel is here today...

• No. 1768 1 Samuel 12:18-25

  At Samuel's word, God sends thunder and rain in the dry season, and the people, terrified, confess: we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for a king. They beg Samuel to pray that they not die. And...

• No. 1808 1 Samuel 20:30-34

  Jonathan has defended his friend David before his father, and Saul erupts in fury. He curses Jonathan, accuses him of shaming himself by siding with the son of Jesse, and warns that as long as David lives,...

• No. 1940 1 Samuel 20:9-16

  David, in danger from Saul, needs to know his true intentions, and Jonathan promises to find out and tell him honestly. Far be it from you to be kept in the dark, Jonathan says; if I knew my father meant you...

• No. 1946 1 Samuel 1:20-28

  Hannah, who had prayed in bitter grief for a child, conceives and bears a son, Samuel, whose name means she asked him of the LORD. When the boy is weaned, she brings him to the sanctuary at Shiloh and gives...

• No. 1966 1 Samuel 26:1-5

  The Ziphites come again to Saul, betraying David's hiding place; and Saul, who had once wept and repented of hunting David, sets out once more with three thousand chosen men to seek him in the wilderness....

• No. 1986 1 Samuel 17:11-15

  As Goliath's challenge rings out, Saul and all Israel are dismayed and terribly afraid. The narrative then turns to introduce David: the youngest of Jesse's eight sons, while his three eldest brothers had gone...

• No. 2086 1 Samuel 14:29-33

  In the heat of battle, Saul had bound the army with a rash oath: cursed be anyone who eats food before evening. His son Jonathan, who had not heard the oath, tasted a little honey and was refreshed, and he saw...

• No. 2087 1 Samuel 11:1-15

  When Nahash the Ammonite threatens the town of Jabesh-Gilead with cruelty, Saul, newly made king, is roused to action. He rallies all Israel, marches through the night, and delivers Jabesh, striking down the...

• No. 2092 1 Samuel 25:21-31

  David, insulted by the harsh and foolish Nabal, sets out in anger to take bloody revenge, vowing to kill every male in Nabal's household by morning. But Nabal's wise wife Abigail rides out to meet him. She...

• No. 2121 1 Samuel 16:12-16

  When Samuel comes to anoint the one God has chosen as king, God passes over the older, more impressive brothers and points to David, the youngest, called in from tending sheep. Arise, anoint him, God says, for...

• No. 2129 1 Samuel 9:22-27

  Samuel, who knows that Saul is the one God has chosen to be king, honors him at a feast and keeps him overnight. As Saul prepares to leave in the morning, Samuel walks with him to the edge of the town, and...

• No. 2134 1 Samuel 9:1-5

  The story of how Saul became Israel's first king begins not with grand ambition but with a lost herd of donkeys. Saul's father, Kish, tells his son to take a servant and go look for the missing animals. Saul...

• No. 2173 1 Samuel 15:17-21

  Samuel confronts King Saul, who was commanded to destroy the Amalekites and all they had, but who spared their king and the best of the plunder. Why did you not obey the LORD's voice, Samuel asks, but pounced...

• No. 2203 1 Samuel 28:20-25

  The story of Saul reaches one of its bleakest moments. Having turned from God and consulted a medium in his desperation, Saul hears a word of doom and collapses in terror to the ground, with no strength left,...

• No. 2230 1 Samuel 4:1-11

  After Israel is defeated by the Philistines, the elders do not ask why God has let them be beaten, or turn to him in repentance. Instead they say, let us bring the ark of the covenant from Shiloh, that it may...

• No. 2276 1 Samuel 14:18-23

  Jonathan's bold attack, made with only his armor-bearer, throws the Philistine camp into panic, and the enemy begins striking one another in confusion. Seeing the tumult, Saul and his men join the battle. The...

• No. 2287 1 Samuel 23:1-5

  When David hears that the Philistines are raiding the town of Keilah, he inquires of the LORD whether he should go and attack them. God says to go and save Keilah. But David's men are afraid: we are already...

• No. 2432 1 Samuel 24:16-22

  David has just spared Saul's life in the cave, cutting only the corner of his robe when he could have killed the king who was hunting him. He calls out and shows Saul the evidence of his mercy. And Saul, the...

• No. 2472 1 Samuel 10:8-13

  Samuel has just anointed Saul, and as Saul turns to leave, the text says God gave him another heart, and the signs Samuel promised all came to pass. A band of prophets meets him, the Spirit of God comes on...

• No. 2495 1 Samuel 15:22-29

  Saul has kept back the choice plunder he was told to destroy, and offers the excuse that he meant to sacrifice it to God. Samuel answers with words that cut through every religious pretense: has the LORD as...

• No. 2529 1 Samuel 25:9-13

  David's men have politely asked the wealthy Nabal for provisions, reminding him that David's band had protected his shepherds. Nabal answers with sneering contempt: who is David? Am I to take my bread and give...

• No. 2581 1 Samuel 18:19-23

  Saul, already jealous of David, offers him his daughter Michal in marriage, secretly hoping the bride-price he sets will get David killed by the Philistines. But David does not hear the trap; he hears only the...

• No. 2640 1 Samuel 30:14-20

  David and his men return to Ziklag to find it burned and their families carried off by Amalekite raiders. Having asked God whether to pursue, and been told he would surely recover all, David chases the raiders...

• No. 2676 1 Samuel 12:6-11

  Samuel stands before Israel and walks them through their own history, and it follows a pattern that repeats like a wheel. God brought your fathers out of Egypt, he says; then they forgot the LORD, and he let...

• No. 2699 1 Samuel 25:14-20

  David's men had guarded Nabal's shepherds and asked only for a share at feast time, and Nabal answered with an insult. Now David is riding out with four hundred armed men to wipe out every male in the...

• No. 2714 1 Samuel 2:11-15

  The boy Samuel is left at Shiloh to serve the Lord, and the narrator immediately sets a contrast that will run through these chapters. Eli's own sons, the priests, are wicked men who do not know the Lord....

• No. 2723 1 Samuel 24:9-15

  David has just spared Saul's life in the cave. With the king who hunts him asleep and within reach, David cut only the corner of Saul's robe when he could have ended everything. Now he calls out from a...

• No. 2760 1 Samuel 6:7-21

  The Philistines, tormented ever since they captured the ark, send it home on a new cart pulled by two milk cows, and they rig a test: if the cows leave their bellowing calves and go straight to Israel, then...

• No. 2779 1 Samuel 7:1-6

  The ark has come to rest at Kiriath-jearim, and there it stays for twenty long years while all Israel laments after the LORD. Then Samuel steps in with the terms of a real return. If you are coming back to the...

• No. 2797 1 Samuel 26:17-25

  A second time David has Saul's life in his hands and lets it go. He has slipped into the sleeping camp and taken the king's spear and water jug, and now he calls out across the valley. Saul knows the voice at...

• No. 2891 1 Samuel 25:1-8

  Samuel dies, and all Israel mourns him. David withdraws to the wilderness, where a wealthy man named Nabal is shearing his sheep, a season of feasting. Nabal is harsh and surly; his wife Abigail is intelligent...

• No. 3016 1 Samuel 17:33-37

  Saul tells David he cannot possibly fight Goliath, a boy against a seasoned warrior. But David answers by recounting his years alone in the fields, keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear carried off...

• No. 3023 1 Samuel 21:1-6

  David, fleeing Saul, comes alone and hungry to the priest Ahimelech at Nob and asks for bread. The only bread there is the holy showbread, just removed from before the LORD, reserved for the priests. But...

• No. 3047 1 Samuel 15:7-11

  Saul is commanded to carry out God's judgment on Amalek in full, but he keeps back King Agag and the best of the livestock, destroying only what was worthless. And the LORD says to Samuel: I regret that I made...

• No. 3097 1 Samuel 2:16-21

  The contrast could hardly be sharper. Eli's grown sons, who are priests, despise the LORD's offering and seize the meat by force, threatening those who resist. Their sin is very great before the LORD. But...

• No. 3118 1 Samuel 13:10-14

  Saul waits for Samuel while his army melts away and the Philistines gather. Unable to wait any longer, he offers the burnt offering himself. Just as he finishes, Samuel arrives, and his rebuke is severe: you...

• No. 3149 1 Samuel 22:11-15

  King Saul summons Ahimelech and all the priests of Nob and accuses them of conspiring with David, because Ahimelech had given him bread and a sword and inquired of God for him. Ahimelech answers calmly and...

• No. 3170 1 Samuel 15:30-35

  Rebuked for his disobedience, Saul pleads with Samuel: I have sinned; yet honor me now before the elders of my people, and come back with me. Samuel goes, and Saul worships. Then Samuel executes Agag, king of...

• No. 3193 1 Samuel 31:1-6

  The Philistines defeat Israel on Mount Gilboa. Saul's sons, including Jonathan, are killed. Saul himself, wounded and hard pressed by the archers, asks his armor-bearer to run him through, and when the man...

• No. 3197 1 Samuel 8:1-6

  Samuel has grown old, and the sons he made judges do not walk in his ways; they take bribes and pervert justice. So the elders come to him with a request: you are old, and your sons are not like you; give us a...

• No. 3209 1 Samuel 12:12-17

  Samuel confronts Israel about their demand for a king. When you saw Nahash the Ammonite coming against you, he says, you told me, no, a king shall reign over us, though the LORD your God was your king. Here...

• No. 3212 1 Samuel 19:20-24

  Saul, set on capturing David, sends messengers to seize him. But when they come upon the company of prophets with Samuel at their head, the Spirit of God falls on Saul's men, and they begin to prophesy...

• No. 3222 1 Samuel 6:1-6

  The ark of the LORD has plagued the Philistines for seven months, and they are desperate to send it back. Their priests advise them not to send it away empty but with a guilt offering of gold. And they add a...

• No. 3229 1 Samuel 23:6-11

  David, sheltering in the town of Keilah, learns that Saul is planning to besiege the town to trap him. So David asks the priest to bring the ephod, and he inquires directly of the LORD: will Saul come down, as...

• No. 3243 1 Samuel 15:1-6

  Samuel brings Saul a hard command: strike Amalek and devote everything to destruction, in judgment for what Amalek did to Israel long ago, ambushing the weak and the stragglers on the way out of Egypt. But...

• No. 3248 1 Samuel 30:8-13

  After raiders burn Ziklag and carry off the families, David inquires of the LORD whether to pursue, and God answers plainly: pursue, for you will surely overtake them and recover all. On the way, David's men...

• No. 3443 1 Samuel 3:6-10

  Young Samuel keeps hearing his name called in the night and runs to Eli, not yet knowing the LORD or recognizing his voice. It is a tender detail the text points out: Samuel does not yet know God personally,...

• No. 3467 1 Samuel 30:1-7

  David returns to find Ziklag burned and everyone's families carried off; he and his men weep until they have no more strength to weep. And then it gets worse: his own men, embittered by grief, begin to talk of...

• No. 3477 1 Samuel 26:12-16

  With Saul asleep and defenseless in the camp, David again refuses to harm the LORD's anointed, though his men urge him to strike. He takes only Saul's spear and water jar as proof that he had been there, and...

• No. 3549 1 Samuel 17:52-58

  After David's victory over Goliath, Israel surges forward and routs the fleeing Philistines. And then a curious exchange follows. King Saul, who had spoken with David before the battle, now asks Abner whose...

• No. 3567 1 Samuel 27:1-7

  After all of God's protection, David has a moment of discouragement and fear: I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul; there is nothing better for me than to escape to the land of the Philistines. So he...

• No. 3588 1 Samuel 17:45-51

  As Goliath advances with sword, spear, and javelin, David answers with words that have rung down the centuries: you come to me with a sword and a spear and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD...

• No. 3639 1 Samuel 14:1-6

  Jonathan, Saul's son, secretly sets out with only his armor-bearer to attack a Philistine garrison, an act of astonishing daring, two men against an army. And his reasoning reveals a magnificent faith: come,...

• No. 3645 1 Samuel 9:17-21

  God directs Samuel to Saul, saying, here is the man of whom I spoke; he shall rule my people. Samuel tells Saul astonishing news, that he and his father's house are the desire of all Israel, meaning that Saul...

• No. 3691 1 Samuel 2:22-26

  Old Eli hears of his sons' grievous sins as priests, and he rebukes them, but weakly, too late and without real correction. He asks a searching question: if a man sins against the LORD, who can intercede for...

• No. 3713 1 Samuel 25:40-44

  After the death of the foolish Nabal, David sends for his widow Abigail, the wise and discerning woman who had earlier turned away David's rash anger and saved lives by her prudence. And Abigail's response is...

• No. 3716 1 Samuel 17:26-32

  Young David, arriving at the camp, is struck by something the seasoned soldiers had grown numb to: how dare this Philistine defy the armies of the living God? Where the army saw an unbeatable giant, David saw...

• No. 3778 1 Samuel 14:34-40

  This passage shows Saul's troubling pattern of rash and self-important religiosity. He builds an altar, seeks God's guidance, and when God does not answer, he swears a solemn oath that whoever has sinned must...

• No. 3832 1 Samuel 28:13-19

  This is one of the saddest scenes in Saul's tragic decline. Facing the Philistine army and terrified, Saul finds that God no longer answers him, by prophet, dream, or any means, and in his desperation he does...

• No. 3840 1 Samuel 23:19-23

  David, on the run from Saul, has taken refuge in the wilderness of Ziph, but the local people, the Ziphites, betray his hiding place to the king, offering to hand him over. It is a bitter thing, to be sold out...

• No. 3866 1 Samuel 2:1-10

  Hannah, once barren and taunted, now holding the son God gave her, pours out a song of praise that reaches far beyond her own story. She marvels at a God who overturns the world's expectations: the bows of the...

• No. 3879 1 Samuel 16:17-23

  Tormented by a troubling spirit, Saul asks for someone who can play the harp to soothe him, and by God's quiet arrangement, the one recommended is David, the shepherd boy already anointed as the future king....

• No. 3969 1 Samuel 17:1-10

  The two armies stand facing each other across the valley, and out from the Philistine ranks strides Goliath, a giant of a man, armored head to toe, his spearhead alone weighing more than most men could lift....

• No. 3999 1 Samuel 14:24-28

  In the middle of a battle against the Philistines, Saul lays a rash oath on his exhausted troops: cursed be anyone who eats food before evening. So the men, though weary and faint, dare not eat, even when they...

• No. 4023 1 Samuel 20:17-23

  This passage shows the depth of Jonathan's love for David. Jonathan, the king's son and natural heir to the throne, has bound himself to David in a covenant of friendship, loving him as he loved his own soul....

• No. 4033 1 Samuel 13:1-9

  With the Philistines massed against him and his own army melting away in fear, Saul waits for the prophet Samuel to come and offer the sacrifice before battle, as had been arranged. But Samuel is delayed, and...

• No. 4048 1 Samuel 13:15-23

  This passage paints a picture of Israel at a great disadvantage. The Philistines had kept the Israelites from having blacksmiths, so that they could not make weapons; on the day of battle, we are told, not a...

• No. 4162 1 Samuel 28:8-12

  This is a scene of a man at the end of himself. Saul, once anointed king, has so cut himself off from God by his disobedience that God no longer answers him. And in his desperation, he does the very thing he...

• No. 4244 1 Samuel 20:1-8

  David, fleeing for his life from Saul, comes to Jonathan, Saul's own son, and pours out his fear. And Jonathan's response is remarkable: whatever you desire, I will do it for you. Though David was the very man...

• No. 4269 1 Samuel 30:26-31

  When David recovers a great store of plunder from the enemies who had raided Ziklag, he does not keep it all for himself and his men. He sends portions of it to the elders of Judah, to his friends, and to all...

• No. 4272 1 Samuel 27:8-12

  This is a low point in David's story. Worn down by Saul's relentless pursuit, David has taken refuge among the Philistines, Israel's enemies, and here we find him living by deception, raiding and covering his...

• No. 4287 1 Samuel 7:7-11

  As the Philistine army advances, Israel is terrified, and they plead with Samuel: do not cease to cry out to the LORD our God for us, that he may save us. Samuel offers a sacrifice and cries out to the LORD on...

• No. 4298 1 Samuel 14:47-52

  This passage summarizes Saul's reign in terms that sound impressive: he fought valiantly against enemies on every side and delivered Israel from those who plundered them; wherever he turned, he prevailed; and...

• No. 4299 1 Samuel 16:1-6

  The prophet Samuel is grieving over Saul, the king who has failed and been rejected. But God comes to him with a gentle challenge and a call forward: how long will you mourn for Saul, since I have rejected...

• No. 4321 1 Samuel 14:41-46

  Saul had bound the army with a rash oath, and his son Jonathan, not knowing of it, had eaten a little honey and so unwittingly fallen under its curse. When the lot falls to Jonathan, Saul declares that he must...